All the president’s doodles
by Tom Sullivan
We know by now the sitting president has problem keeping state secrets when boasting is an option. It seems he revealed yesterday the existence of invisible U.S. fighter jets.
🤷🏻♂️ Here's What Trump Told The Coast Guard When He Visited Them On Thanksgiving https://t.co/yi4WWn96KH pic.twitter.com/wpTH4bwBGd— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) November 23, 2017
James Fallows corrected that bit of misinformation. No, the planes are not actually invisible.
2/2 This is how F-35s would look in flight to other aircraft.
More on pluses/minuses of F-35 here: https://t.co/cz2xGmewT5 pic.twitter.com/SxyTmVaNQG— James Fallows (@JamesFallows) November 23, 2017
But you’ll notice freedom is out as a presidential shibboleth. This president doesn’t care about freedom so much as winning. Instead of parading around the mess hall in person with a plastic turkey, the sitting president graced troops with his telepresence:
“Everybody’s talking about the progress you’ve made in the last few months since I opened it up,” Trump said about his decision to add a small number of troops to the 16-year long conflict in Afghanistan. “We opened it up, we said go ahead, we’re going to fight to win. We’re not fighting anymore to just walk around, we’re fighting to win. And you people, you’ve really turned it around in the past three to four months like nobody’s seen and they are talking about it. So thank you very much, brave, incredible fighters.”
“We’re being talked about as an armed forces. We’re really winning. We know how to win,” Trump said. “But we have to let you win. They weren’t letting you win before. They were letting you play even. We’re letting you win.”
Which, of course, is only possible because Himself is in the White House.
The Thanksgiving teleconference got under the skin of at least one retired general:
Retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, took issue with Trump’s comments and aired his discontent shortly after on CNN, where he serves as a military analyst.
“We have been winning,” Hertling said. “You’re talking to soldiers and military personnel around the world who have been in this fight for 17 years, and to suddenly be told they’re winning now when they weren’t winning before is somewhat insulting.”
But we can probably cut the sitting president some slack. His mind has been elsewhere lately.
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